Here is a message for atheists/agnostics on FJ. God can be found in any religion, but once you find him your religion will change and morph to what is right in his eyes. Religions are merely mediums to get acquainted with God. Do not let any religious zealot nuts discourage you or convince you to be atheist. If you are going to be atheists, do it on the grounds of evidence (or lack thereof), don't do it because religious people are ******. If you feel there could be a God, search for him in your own ways. But don't give up because you had a lousy witness.

No, I believe God takes an active role in daily life to a hugely expansive way. Therefore, I am theist, not deist. My evidence for it is all spiritual and somewhat paranormal at levels. You may think I'm crazy, and I respect that. Each must operate from the evidences they have found. But I will say this; if one does not search for spiritual evidence (and one must do this by faith), they will never find it. But if they do not search, they will truly never know. It is a paradox. God is known on a relational plane, not a physical plane. Science may never find him, it may only point to the probabilities that he may exist. Spiritual experiences are the hardest of evidences, but they are not credited as evidence at all by opposing atheists. For the atheist to truly deduce what is reality, they must have an open mind as well.

I was too before I found God in other ways. I found it easier to find God thro eastern religions especially Neo Confucianism because it is a purer expression of God and is closer to how God should be expressed than the Western traditional Christianity does. The original Christianity was much closer to those Eastern religions anyway. The issue with western Christianity is that it makes God a surface level creature who you make wishes to instead of a real being you have a relationship with. perhaps that is the problem you are having/had.

meh. I'm atheist because of three reasons
1. incredible amount of lies and hypocrisies in christianity
2. lack of evidence of a god, science explains more
3. omnipotence is a lie. without omnipotence, there is no god, just a higher being

well either omnipotence as we define it is a lie, or omnipotence and free will being compatible is a lie. I can agree with that, yes. But like I said before, discounting God for lousy people is bad logic and not a good reason to be an atheist.
And for your second point (the only one I haven't addressed), science only measures physical things so of course you will not find God, a supernatural being on it. Grading God with science is like measuring water with a ruler. The best scientific look at God is thro how fine tuned the universe and the earth is and how low of a possibility it being random is. There is other mumbo jumbo one could raise about it, but I'm not here to argue.

But what proof do you have for believing in this? What makes you sure that there is a god and it's not just the bottom right part of your brain acting up? I guess that's the fourth reason why. You can't trust your brain. No one can. It'll lie to you on a daily basis. Science will never be able disprove god, because he is constantly put outside our plain of being, yet maintains a relationship with us. I have no clue how that works. And can omnipotence have any other definition? Is the way we describe it not the true definition? Can a god create a rock too heavy for him to pick up? not trying to argue, just trying to understand. sorry if I come across as a prick.

You don't come off as a prick at all, don't sweat it. There are things that are absolutely impossible and things that are impossible. God cannot create a rock that even He cannot lift because such a thing is logically impossible. Such a rock cannot exist not because God isn't powerful enough to create one, but because such a heavy rock is impossible to conceive of. A better, clearer example of something that is absolutely impossible is a spherical square. God cannot create a spherical square, not because his power is limited, but because such a thing is impossible to conceive of. The best definition for omnipotence then is this: The power to do anything logically possible that one would wish to do. The relationship with God will happen on a spiritual level. Take for, instance, when you listen to a sad song and it genuinely saddens you and makes you feel. it is beautiful. That is something that can be called the sublime. The sublime is how God communicates with man generally. You can say feelings like that are just chemicals, however there is something much more going on. That song can mean different things for different people which brings about different feelings. The chemicals are the same, but one can never deduce if they opened up someone's brain if they say, enjoy it or not. A better example is chocolate. I can eat chocolate and all the chemicals can go off in my brain, but a scientist has never (and I think can never) find if I enjoyed it or not. Memories, preferences, intricate personality details are all non-physical things we know exist but cannot deduce physically thro science. The wonders of the mind makes me reject materialism. That rejection brings me to a belief in a transcendent, non-physical realm. Such an existence, I assumed, would be impossible without something supernatural donning it. That is where I began my search for God: under the deduction that materialism is false.

The chemical reactions one feels while listening to a song are in fact very different. They do tell the brain whether or not it likes the song or not, and scientists can see whether or not the person likes it as well. You started out as a blank slate. Every single experience you have ever had has affected you as a person. One thing leads to another and you believe the things you do, as do I. Life is the experiences we have. Whether that brings us to the truth is completely different. When I listen to a song, the signals my brain sends to it's self when I listen to a song I like are very different to that of a person who hasn't had the same experiences and likes the song for different reasons. It's a very complicated system, but it's the truth. Science has proven that.

Intricacies of why we prefer certain foods or music still remains unknown. The science you are referring to is mostly psychologists making guesses. Furthermore, our experiences and how they shape our personalities, preferences, and the like is something non-physical but yet we know is true. It shows that there are unseen actions made by the brain devoid or above chemical reactions. You'd recognize this brain function as the mind. We know the mind is deeply affected by the brain, yet the mind can also act independently of the brain. Exploring the subconscious is something psychologists do as a science, but a science of the unseen. Non-physical realities existing again. Also, mathematical truths are known to exist even though they cannot be proven. Euclid's first axiom for example (any two points can be connected by one straight line), we know the axiom is true intuitively. We can physically draw two points big enough to draw two straight lines between points, but we know that is false because we drew the dots to big. It is just true. Intuitive truths are another non-physical reality that transcends materialism. The sublime expression of awe when staring at a beautiful landscape is also something devoid of chemical explanation, so something else must be assumed. There are even other things that materialism cannot answer for. High reasoning, for instance. We are having an intelligent conversation pondering about the nature of the realities we experience. Why do we have this capability? If one were to evolve by natural selection alone (I am not denying evolution, just arguing against natural selection alone being at work), it would only develop traits necessary for survival. The brain never should have developed the ability to perform things like calculus and philosophy because it has no benefit to man's ability to survive. Materialism cannot produce a great and freely thinking man.

well, he has a point. most of the christians that put themselves into the limelight are fakers, psychotics, or just using the bible to mask their own political agenda. But, I would say that those "christians" will be the ones who are most severely punished for leading others astray.

I don't know what the hell is going on with all these Christian "bashing" posts...
1. It's not really that funny
2. It's hurtful
3. It's getting really old
I'm a Christian and I love FJ. Please don't ruin it for me.
It really hurts me to see that people have been hurt by followers of Christ and I'm truly sorry. I personally try to care and love all people the same way Jesus would and yet I am constantly being bombarded with name intolerance and blatant disrespect from people who don't share the same belief as I do. I, as a Christian, am not claiming to be perfect. I think that we can all agree, Christian or not, that we have really screwed up before. So please, can we just learn to stop tearing each other down and try building each other up.

Pretty sure he said ALL followers. Also pretty sure that I'm a follower and I didn't do anything or say anything to him directly to hurt him as a person. And here we see that Seth is implying that I, as a follower of Jesus, have done something wrong. I have NEVER in my life believed that God hates gays. He loves us all. INCLUDING GAYS. (John 3:16)

Every group has stupid followers, judging them all as a group is unfair. I don't think everybody who plays xbox is a twelve year old *******, or ever football fan is a raving lunatic, or everybody that watches family guy still (family guy used to be great, not so much anymore) is a moron, there are exceptions to every rule and every group will have some dumb asses who ruin it for everybody. Do we blame ever German for the actions of the Nazis? No. So we shouldn't blame every Christian because there were some bad apples. Most (as in like 99%) are just average people that rarely bring up religion, the only time religion is mentioned on funnyjunk is by atheists complaining about Christians anyway. Christians can take a joke better than most groups, and this one is pretty harmless and not particularly offensive but it brings up a point I feel needs to be addressed. People don't become insane because they're in a group with some insane people, I have yet to find a group with more than a few people that doesn't have at least one douche making everybody look bad. We're individuals and should be treated that way.

You know it takes two to fight. I mean, I am a catholic, and also a bio-geek who is enjoying Charles Darwin's: The Origin of Species. If people just took the best of both worlds instead of blindly criticizing eschother and making fun of each other's beliefs, then things would be much better. Fanatic christians are wrong, but all the atheist who insult religion because they think it's stupid are just as bad to our society.

Hey, me too. You should read "Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and believe in Evolution". It sounds like a manual but it's not. It's more of a history lesson. It basically shows that the evolution vs creationism thing was manufactured. It's a great read.